Patch 5.4 patch notes
Virtual Realms feature revealed
The Proving Grounds are coming
The latest patch 5.4 newsInsider Trader: Jewelcrafting nerf incoming
by Amanda Miller 
May 22nd 2009 at 4:00PM
Insider Trader is your inside line on making, selling, buying and using player-made products.Bornakk just announced on the forums that Jewelcrafters are about to see a new nerf, and as a result, people are already beginning to weigh the benefits of switching to a different profession for min-maxing, or working out how they are going to re-itemize their gear.
Bornakk:
In the next major content patch we will be removing the prismatic quality of the jewelcrafter-only Dragon's Eye gems. Like other gems, they will have to match the socket color to receive a socket bonus. When this change occurs, players with qualifying jewelcrafting skill will be provided a yet to be determined amount of Dalaran Jewelecrafter Tokens as compensation.
This probably won't be enough to entice players to drop the profession, but it is a bit of a blow. Stratfu points out that because Mage T8 is equipped primarily with yellow and blue sockets, the only way to actually meet socket bonus requirements will be to use sub-par gems.
The JC-only Runed Dragon's Eye offers +32 spell power, and currently fits into any socket, conforming to meet the necessary color requirements. This is compared to the +19 spell power that the rest of us folks get from Runed Scarlet Rubies. While Jewelcrafters will still be able to use these gems, they won't be able to stick them just anywhere.
Breaking it down
Jewelcrafters can equip three of these soon-to-be-not-prismatic gems, and the fact is that for many classes, red gems offer the best stats in many cases. That is the main reason that Scarlet Rubies sell for often double the price of any other comparable gem on the market. For some classes, their gear simply will not include three red sockets.
Another example would be tier 8 and tier 8.5 sets for protection Paladins. While they benefit most from blue gems, their sets have only one blue socket!
While it may seem to some to be an easy compromise to forgo a socket bonus or use a different gem, it does mean that some classes simply won't benefit from being Jewelcrafters as much as other classes. Not being able to take advantage of your own profession's rewards for leveling it seems counter-intuitive, and unfair to the affected classes.
Would this mean that min-maxing guilds would suddenly prefer, for example, a Jewelcrafting prot Warrior over a JC prot Paladin, simply because the Warrior can squeeze more out of his/her stats? After all, tanks are becoming increasingly homogenized. Many fights no longer require a specific class. Unfortunately, many high-end guilds do block people from raid slots for not having the right profession, for example.
Compensation
The Jewelcrafting Token compensation is also a curious mechanic. Will the Dragons Eyes disappear entirely, or will your equipped and/or cut gems disappear? Unlikely. Most likely, you will log in to find your once prismatic gems converted into their corresponding colors. The tokens will be handed out as a means of compensation for the fact that many players will have to replace them.
But why JC?
Presumably this nerf comes as a response to the popularity of the profession. Not only is it one of, if not the, best gold making professions in the game, it is also considered a must for min-maxing your raiding gear. In fact, many high-end guilds require that their raiders become Jewelcrafters and either Enchanters or Blacksmiths in addition.
When Blizzard finally decides to add epic gems into the game, this nerf will hit the JC community even harder if the gems aren't buffed significantly, as Stratfu mentions. After all, each profession has its profession-only perks, and if they don't scale, and new ones are not introduced in their place, we'd all feel like Engineers carrying around old Arcanite Dragonlings and the like.
Of course, there is no need for panic. Patch 3.2 may not be the epic gem patch, meaning that we may yet see buffs to the Dragon's Eye gems that have not yet been announced.
Discussion
What do you think about this change? How are you going to have to re-work your gear? Is this actually going to affect your decision to take up, or keep, the Jewelcrafting profession?
We want to know your take on the matter. Hop on Twitter, leave a comment here, or blog about it with your new WoW.com profile feature! Don't forget to add the #wowcom tag to the end of your tweet!
Each week, Insider Trader takes you behind the scenes of the bustling sub-culture of professional craftsmen, examining the profitable, the tragically lacking, and the methods behind the madness. Check out our analysis of patch 3.1 profession changes, or read through our in-depth analysis of the changes to flasks in 3.1. Filed under: Mage, Paladin, Enchanting, Items, Analysis / Opinion, Economy, Jewelcrafting, Features, Raiding, Enchants, Insider Trader (Professions)
Reader Comments (Page 4 of 6)
pfoooti May 22nd 2009 6:36PM
I'm actually not so worried about slot bonuses. I'm used to ignoring them - they're nice perks, but it usually pays to just stack up on whatever stat was hottest for you. What I do worry about is meta requirements. It's trivially easy to meet your meta requirements with dragons' eyes, but my Warlock (for example) has to slot two +spirit/spellpower gems to activate her meta. That's the big thing, the prismatics not only give their higher-than-usual benefit, they make it so you can stack up everything else in your top stat.
GnomesScareMe May 22nd 2009 7:01PM
You guys are missing the biggest advantage of JC perqs. It's the amazing flexibility. Foir example the dragon's eyes can be cut to add +Ap or +str. With enchanting, i can only add +AP to my rings, even if +16str would be more beneficial than +32ap. Not so with JCing, you can cut whatever stat is most beneficial for you, whether it be +54ap or +27str. No agi, no int, no mp5 with ring enchants. It's only AP, Stam or SP.
breaklance May 22nd 2009 7:04PM
Doesn't seem like a big deal. Seems like we'll all just have to go back to what we did in BC, stacking red gems only other gems when we need them for the meta. Or we'll have to look at the bonuses carefully and evaluate each peice and whether its bonus is beneficial to just using x2 red gems.
Suzanne May 22nd 2009 7:25PM
booooo, add me to the list of sad prot pallies. I have a hard enough time meeting my socket bonus requirements as it is (and just forget about meta gems, sheeyoot).
I'll still keep the profession though, because I've found it's really helpful to my non-JC guildies, since I can toss gems to them mid-raid as they pick up new pieces. The nerf sucks, but I picked JC so I could help my group and that's not going to change =)
Verit May 22nd 2009 7:41PM
Some bonuses are cool, most aren't worth it though - just keep doing what your doing :).
Maybe there are too many stats too - I mean blizzard does go through a stat of month sort of phase don't they. One month is haste, the next its armor penetration and then every piece of gear that drops out of a raid for that "stat of the month" focuses on that.
magjee May 22nd 2009 7:51PM
.co.za is used for South Africa not Zaire
Zaire is the old name for the Democratic Republic of Congo which is represented by .cd
Gandromil May 22nd 2009 8:48PM
/facepalm *sigh*
nuff said
Rilgon May 22nd 2009 9:05PM
"For some classes, their gear simply will not include three red sockets. "
So what? You can stick any color gem into any color socket - all you lose is the gear's socket bonus. Non-JCs have to deal with this all the time, and now JCs are being brought down to everyone else's level.
JC is still 33 points of itemization compared to 32 in every other crafting profession (aside from Engineering, which has absolutely nothing worthwhile for PVE), so I have no idea why any Jewelcrafters are complaining. You're still the best profession both income-wise and stat gain-wise.
VSUReaper May 22nd 2009 9:19PM
Ok, so I'm a lil confused about the wording here, or maybe I'm reading into it to much....
So the gems wont be prismatic anymore, and people will be swapping the gems out for other gems now? Why? Will the gems no longer work unless the gem matches the socket (i.e. red socket on the shoulders with the stam gem in it)?
Who cares if you get an extra 6 stam or crit or whatever the socket bonus is. As a tank I never match bonuses. If I tried to match socket bonuses on my gear, I would have about 2k hp less than I already do. Very rarely are bonuses worth matching, and usually if you can match them and still socket how you normally would want to by ignoring the bonus, then the bonus is meh as best.
thebitterfig May 22nd 2009 10:13PM
Frankly, fair. I'm all for JC getting the better gems which add the 39 spellpower, 48 stam, etc. However, free socket bonuses (sure, it might only be a few points here and there) do add up. Might add up to, say 115% of the bonuses provided by other professions, and that defeats the whole point of what bliz was trying to do with them. Also, JC's would nearly automatically get meta gem requirements. In the meanwhile, bliz should add more Dragon's Eye gems, namely the split-color ones, just for completeness sake. Now, basically all non-gathering professions will provide about equal benefits, and it will get easier to just go with what you like.
To all the min-maxers out there: to heck with you and your compulsive need to have the best stuff. Us regular folks don't want to feel forced into specific professions.
Rilgon May 22nd 2009 11:08PM
"Now, basically all non-gathering professions will provide about equal benefits"
Except Engineering, of course.
Dafriz May 22nd 2009 11:44PM
... im a jcer and i originally was one of two jcer's in the guild in burning crusade (due to how explensive it was to buy all the random world drop recipes him and I were i guess had the gold to actually buy out all the needed recipes for our raiders in guild...) we didn't have any buff or reason to be a jcer except we provided a service for our guild to be sure they had the gem cuts they needed to be the best for the guild.
that is until sunwell and we got some kickazz trinkets
pretty much I am guessing about a third of the guild are now jcer's bcuz of the bonuses... idk i think the introduction of the epic jcing gems coming in will diminish the value of the dragon's eyes by themselves as a whole.. so what is the point in nerfing it in the next patch if epic gems will be coming into play soon and thus nerfing the value of the gems already ?? AKA WHY NERF SOMTHING THAT WILL ALREADY SOON BE NERFED ???
and to anyone that says there will never be a requirement in any raiding guild for a profession.. im sry guess what... its been that way for a while for the hardcore guilds/ if your in a hardcore guild that requires you to have no farming professions and 2 enhancement professions and your unhappy about it... u shouldn't have join it in the first place bcuz they wouldnt be your niche
nerfing jcing now will just result in creating another unbalance in the other way and the hardcore guilds will just force u to pick up leatherworking/blackmsithing/enchanting then... it doesn't fix a problem thats not a problem.. it's a guilds personal choice and honestly with the epic gems coming out its possible these guilds will just force your to take the 3 professions listed above anyways in the near future
Viper007Bond May 23rd 2009 3:02AM
Just ignore socket bonus.
Zanathos May 23rd 2009 3:20AM
Eh, annoying change for sure, but considering how socket bonuses usually aren't work getting anyway, this doesn't seem like that huge a change. If a socket bonus is good enough, a jewelcrafter will now consider what gem to put in (and probably just socket a red anyway). This seems more like a change that's so minor it wasn't worth making than ruining jewelcrafting.
orkgashmo May 23rd 2009 5:53AM
I'am a ENG/JC (the worst and the best for PvE right now) and these are my thoughts about this "incoming" nerf:
- if there is more people getting JC as a profession right now may be just because there is more people leveling alts and it's a better choice (like inscription or enchanting) for helping your other toons and guildmates (and saving you some money at the AH). it's just like the high number of new DK's.
- JC dailies are funny, I loved the token system for cooking and I miss it in my other professions, specially in ENG. it makes people stick to a profession, because you're not going to reroll after all these token days. I prefer this system over the world-drop-recipes or the inscription books, just because it's not random. for me, this is the way to go with all professions.
- guilds that enforce to reroll your profession for min/max will do it anyway, to the new flavour of the patch. as they always do, because when you're so far in raiding you can spent the time/money needed for rerolling.
- prismatic gems are a good idea (help with the meta socket colour problem and the bonus much better than the orange/green/purple ones), but I may agree they are too powerful. they still can make the Dragon Eye's not-prismatic, but give us a less powerful prismatic gem for basic stats (and make it expensive). anyway, with the incoming epic gems a new world is going to open, so there is yet to be seen how this is going to end.
- for last, Engineering needs some changes, like making the chooper (and new mounts) daily-token based instead of just a goofy gold-farming one time event. I want to see a Goblin JetPack, a Extreme Jumping Robovehicles (like the one in the Icecrown daily), a Personal Turbo Zeppelin or a Rocket Mount. came on, make selling mounts the way to go for us with a daily token system, or give us a Martin Fury's Button trinket (with a 1% chance of killing the big boss when it's below 25% of his live, and a 99% of wiping the whole raid).
I'm the only one who loves the daily token system of JC?
Steve May 23rd 2009 6:39AM
Blizz noooooo!!!! I JUST powerleveled JC a few weeks ago for those lovely sp gems. boo.
GoldenGoat May 23rd 2009 8:37AM
Well ... *hilarious* gloom-and-doom mentality here notwithstanding, this is a pretty reasonable nerf. (Compare this to the fury warrior nerf, for example. "Fury warriors are doing moderately more damage than they're supposed to in gimmick fights! Let's make them the worst DPS class in the game!") This takes a profession that was SLIGHTLY more powerful for min-maxxers than the others ... and kicks it down a half-step to make the other choices seem more viable. I'd been hearing an increasing amount of grumbling from the more elitist wing of my guild toward people who didn't "Man up" and reroll JC'ing. This should keep things relatively balanced.
Amaxe-1 May 23rd 2009 9:12AM
GG Blizz. That just destroyed the personal bonus of being a JC. (for those of you saying we can still sell gems, I tend to be a JC for personal benefit for myself, my alts and my guild)
The prismatic quality was hardly an OP thing given the limits to amounts of gems you could use with these.
Hmm, what the hell do I shift to now? I know engineering is in the crapper but I do have the rep needed to make a motorcycle...
Amaxe-1 May 23rd 2009 9:55AM
I've seen a number of what can be boiled down to "QQ moar" comments.
The objection we JCs have is not that we were nerfed "period" but that the nerf we receive makes us much worse off for having JC than it would for other professions (except maybe engineering).
What we had: the removal of the socketing requirements through the use of 3 prismatics which had a nice help in stat boost.
What we will have: 3 Gems which will be inferior to the upcoming epics.
Maybe I *will* go engineering. it has to go up sometime, right?
ballistic3188 May 26th 2009 2:39AM
you know what is funny is JC complaining about a non existant epic gems. That is not a reasonable excuse of why your profession can be OP in the mean time.
your gems as currently available benefit is equal to those provided by the other profession the fact that they were prismatic gave them high value in that socket bonuses and meta gem activation didn't need less optimal gems.
it is nerf but not the profession destroying sense that you seem to be claiming